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I hated the ubiquity and right-on-ness of this LP when it was massive in the 80s but coming back to it after twenty odd years, I find that I was wrong... it's wonderful. This reissue is tops and I recommend the making-of doco 'Under African Skies' as well.

I would have thought his early stuff would be twee and flimsy, so I'm intrigued charles. But then again, he did produce that Jackson C Frank record quite early on so, which should have been a strong indicator of good taste.

Yeah I'd heard that accusation... of course it's one guy's version of events, I'm sure Simon would have another. Arguments over %s of contribution are an old story, right?

Simon's approach on Graceland was to take elements of other songs and elaborate on them... so he gave out co-writes to lots of African musicians on that record, so why didn't he give one to Los Lobos if they actually had a case? It's not like he was trying to convince the world that everything on the LP was all him.

Simon's response to the accusations:
''This Los Lobos thing has come up before, so I wanted to talk to you direct. They said all this stuff to Songtalk magazine in the States, and I’ve replied to it all in an interview that hasn’t run yet, but its all there. There was a bad atmosphere at those sessions (with Los Lobos on Graceland) from the start; I don’t know what it is with them. The whole deal for them working on Graceland was all worked out beforehand between Los Lobos and Lenny Warnoker (Managing Director at Warners USA) and there were no complaints at the time. It was made clear from the outset that we didn’t have a song. There was no song. It was being written from scratch. I was – and still am – a fan of the band. What I really love is the accordion sound. So we started jamming in the rehearsal room and nothing was really coming together, and so I said do you have any ideas we can work on. What I wanted for the Graceland track was like a generic Los Lobos dikka-de-dikka guitar sound. And so we came up with something around a riff. They never once said that this guitar line is one of ours and we don’t want you to have it. So we worked on recording this track for about three days, which is a long time to work on one track. I had to teach David how to sing this song! And then David Hildago came up to me and said “we’re not happy with this track. We wanna do a ballad”. But I couldn’t have that. At that time it was the last track of the whole album – eventually we did one more – and I just said at this stage I don’t care whether the album comes out without Los Lobos on it. I was getting really tired of it – I don’t want to get into a public slanging match over this, but this thing keeps coming up.

“So we finished the recordings. And three months passed, and there was no mention of “joint writing”. The album came out and we heard nothing. Then six months passed and Graceland had become a hit and the first thing I heard about the problem was when my manager got a lawyer’s letter. I was shocked. They sent this thing to my manager, not me. If there was a problem they could have contacted me direct, they’ve got my home number, we talked a lot. If you ask me it was a lawyer’s idea. You know, “the records a hit, and there’s $100,000 in it”. They had nine months from the recordings to talk to me about all this, but I heard nothing. And its still not sorted out because they still keep bringing it up – I heard they’d done this interview for you. I don’t want to get into a public slanging match with them, because I really like their music.”

Steve Berlin's response to that:
''Steve Berlin here -Wow- thats the first time I’ve seen Pauls response and theres so much there that is not at all what happened. First off- I didn’t bring any of this up recently- it came out of an interview I did for the release of our last record about 2 years ago, so I’m hardly stirring things up- it just seems like a lot of people have spread it around recently, and I’m happy gets a proper airing. His story really breaks down when he whines about Davids singing- remember they were instrumental jams so nobody was singing anything, nor were we expected to. What happened is exactly as I told it- Paul had nothing idea-wise, and after 2 miserable days of truly pointless jamming we started playing a Lobos track we had rehearsed briefly and had intended to prepare for our next record. Paul said :What’s that? excitedly and we replied it was a track we had begun to put together- he says great lets do that, and it comes together in about 90 minutes. We thought we were clear as can be that it was one of our songs that we were playing- god knows it wasnt one of Pauls BECAUSE HE DIDNT HAVE ANY, EVER during the 48 hours we spent with him. As far as getting Dave to sing – that is a complete hallucination. Were were just making music- Paul told us he likes to take the tracks to his place in the Hamptons and throw a tennis ball at the wall while he comes up with rhymes- it was on 60 Minutes back then and I believe it shows him working on our song. We never thought that we were going to sing on it- we were just happy to be away from him and Roy the engineer. Then as far as the aftermath of the release- we thought it was an honest mistake and went in search of him or his representatives to square things. Months go by, the world is totally enraptured by the concept and the sound and our piddly comlaints are off the radar. We tried for months to find someone to get to Paul and register our complaint and the next thing we hear back which I have always thought came directly from Paul to Linda Clark, our manager at that time is this sentence-:You wanna sue me? Just try it ,, see what happens to you.” We didnt know what to do but we didnt want to slug it out in court, and Lenny said if we stopped whining about it he would make it all better. Basically we then got strung along till we went in to make La Bamba and then it fell off our active radar as all his other stuff began happening, I also wryly note Pauls line about hearing nothing for months after it came out- we were calling everyone we knew trying to get it worked out before more copies got sold, and then we heard he had to re do the cover to give the African players their proper credit, so that made us even more furious. And this day I dont think we ever got a penny for the 2 days work, so the moral here is always have a legal agreement before you start collaborating, especially with known assholes.''

that stuff about los lobos i never knew. my take is i believe them. he does seem like a bit of a little arrogant somewhat talentless cunt. interesting stuff on the interwebs about the relation of how he made that record and colonialism and ethics and stuff etc. can just picture him throwing a tennis ball against the wall with his shitty little arm in his mansion in the Hamptons thinking about how he will find his next 'masterpiece' (and millions)..

So worth it!! Played for about 100mins.
Finished with a duet of The Boxer with Rufus. I concur with Team Ham Sandwich... that bass solo! Good mix of songs. My highlight was Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes, Dazzling Blue, and The Boxer.